"Music triggered a healing process from within me. I started singing for
the joy of singing myself and it helped me carry my recovery beyond the
state I was in before I fell ill nine years ago to a level of well-being
that I haven't had perhaps for thirty years."
This book explores the experiences of people who took part in a vibrant
musical community for people experiencing mental health difficulties,
SMART (St Mary Abbotts Rehabilitation and Training). Ansdell (a music
therapist/researcher) and DeNora (a music sociologist) describe their
long-term ethnographic work with this group, charting the creation and
development of a unique music project that won the 2008 Royal Society
for Public Health Arts and Health Award. Ansdell and DeNora track the
'musical pathways' of a series of key people within SMART, focusing on
changes in health and social status over time in relation to their
musical activity. The book includes the voices and perspectives of
project members and develops with them a new understanding of how music
promotes their health and wellbeing. A contemporary ecological
understanding of 'music and change' is outlined, drawing on and further
developing theory from music sociology and Community Music Therapy. This
innovative book will be of interest to anyone working in the mental
health field, but also music therapists, sociologists, musicologists,
music educators and ethnomusicologists. This volume completes a three
part 'triptych', alongside the other volumes, Music Asylums: Wellbeing
Through Music in Everyday Life, and How Music Helps: In Music Therapy
and Everyday Life.
